


Issues

by paintedbutton



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Eating Disorders, F/M, Feelings, Friendship/Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 06:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6554605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedbutton/pseuds/paintedbutton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a lot of issues. Russell works around them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Issues

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically an exploration piece on my Courier with an added bonus of my OTP because how else am I going to get content for it?
> 
> Russell is a mod follower and not technically romanceable but I am very much not sorry.

It doesn't take Russell long to realize Sam's relationship with food is a little fucked up. It’s in the little things: her skewed estimations of the amount of food they need, how she doesn’t even look when she packs it, how easily she pushes past a rumbling stomach even for someone living on the road. He doesn't say anything, doesn't ask her about it, but maybe he offers to grill something up for them most nights. She never finds an excuse not to eat but occasionally it seems to take more effort than it should. It's visible in her face that she's forcing it. He's not quite sure why he cares. They work well enough as a team but her habit of prying into everything is more than a little annoying. So are her ability to draw trouble wherever they go, or go seeking it out, and her constant distractions. That trail of his ain't getting any hotter as time goes by. But this still beats wasting his days away at the 188. And, if he's honest, he likes her. She might be annoyingly persistent about getting him to open up but they seem work on some level. Been a while since he’s had anybody take his commentary and run with it the way she does. So he tries, in his own way. Sometimes he thinks she notices but she never brings it up.

 

It's Cass who breaks their silence on the matter all of two days after she leaves the Outpost with them. Sam waves dinner off that night, in favor of heading a little further. He’s only ever seen the woman have a penchant for a liquid diet but Cass is still pretty damned insistent on food. Too much time in a dive bar with regular meals he’d guess.

"Have you actually eaten anything today?" Sam had some canned pork for breakfast. He knows because she gave him the leftovers. Nothing since then as far as he remembers. Her face closes off almost immediately at the question. It’s strange to watch. She’s usually just about the opposite.

"Sure I have. Does it matter?" The tone of her voice is a challenge. _Go on, keep prying, I dare you._ Cass doesn't push.

 

They reach Novac somewhere around 11, lose Cass to the sorry excuse for a bar, and make their way to the Motel room that's been hers before he ever knew her. Her shoulders have been hunched for hours now, shoulder blades cutting out of her top like they're trying to break free. He doesn't ask, just makes them some food on the hot plate that she's stashed next to her workbench. She eats without complaint but her face is still stormy as all hell.

"I'm not talkin' about it," she says, finally breaking the silence, and he feels himself relax a little. Sam’s not the kind of person for prolonged silences. Even when he'd tried to keep everything strictly business between them she wasn't having any of it. So having her shut up for so damn long has just made him feel on edge.

"About what?"

She rolls her eyes but something in her relaxes. "Funny. Pretty sure you've been feedin' me for weeks now."

"Maybe I just think you're shit at cooking." He feels his own mouth turn up when she chuckles.

"Well, you're not wrong." She leans back, fishing a half-crushed pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. He takes one when she offers. She blows a breath of smoke into the air and watches it dissipate. "I try, y'know? I'm getting better about it."

He looks away. If this is better, he's not sure he wants to know about worse. "I know, pardner."

 

She gets angry at herself when she doesn't eat all day, when someone has to nudge her. The nudging itself, she mostly seems to be fine with. But anyone asks her about it, or seems worried, and she closes off almost instantly. So he never does the latter. She was right, though, she is getting better about it, even if she sometimes looks a little like she hates every bite she's putting into her mouth. She doesn't turn down food, she doesn’t leave all that much in terms of leftovers and if she does, she passes them off to someone else. It’s the wastelander in her bones, if he had to guess. You live on the road long enough, and you stop wasting precious food. The Mojave might be civilized these days but it wasn’t always and not every corner got the damn memo.

"It's about control," she explains simply when he tells her to just fucking leave it and stop forcing herself one night. She doesn't elaborate on that. As time goes on, the bad days seem to get fewer. It's surprisingly relieving.

 

Arcade is the one who ends up being the most dogged about it. Probably to be expected, the Followers are a decent bunch but they sure like their 'getting help' business. As if everyone needs their heads scrubbed like that. At first it's about proper nutrition and watching what you put in your body, then it turns to therapy and body image until Sam finally seems to have enough.

"Jesus fuck, Arcade, I'm fine alright?"

"I may not be qualified but Usanagi is. I think you sent that First Recon sniper to her?"

"Sure, she needed it. I'm managing just fine on my own."

He gives her a doubtful look. "Sam, it's okay to get help for a problem."

"Next time somebody shoots me I'll be sure to remember that."

"But -"

"I don't go prying into your issues, do I?" Not technically correct. Russell knows she's tried, but Arcade does sigh in defeat. "'Sides ... I'm puttin' on weight these days, stop worrying." Arcade looks ready to argue that point but stops at the look she gives him.  He wouldn't know that she's right, her collar bones are much less severely cut against her skin these days. Russell doesn't bring that up, better not to bring attention to the fact that he's been noticing.

 

The first time they fuck (drunk, sloppy, high on the relief of still being alive), the sharp cut of her hipbones becomes his anchor. He sees the bruises there the next morning but she just shrugs them off. She's got too many of those to care right now. He jokes that he usually likes his women with more meat on them and the wry twist of her mouth makes him think he fucked up there before she grins up at him and shrugs.

"So do I. Makes us even, doesn't it?" He doesn't know what to say to that. At least they seem to be clear on where they stand with this, one time and no hard feelings. When it happens again (and again), he gives up on that illusion. Sam's always been easy though, doesn’t get needy beyond the physicality of what’s between them, and he doesn't know why he had any reservations to begin with. He stops pretending she's not his type when he realizes how easy it is to lift her and fuck her against a wall until she's biting his shoulder in an attempt to stop her moans. She gets him back for those bruises by digging her nails into his back so hard she draws blood. After that, they call it even.

 

At some point, with his head between her legs, he jokes that he's going to get fat these days with how much he's been eating her out. She just laughs and pushes his head back down.

"If you're tryin' to get me to go down on you, that's not how it works." He grins and pushes his tongue back into her, her heels digging into his back.

 

Months later he watches her sprawl out across a stained and borrowed mattress, blowing smoke into the air. She's lost the tightness in her muscles that had been evident when that _thing_ had finally sent her back to the Mojave. He'd been camping out here for a while now. Nipton is a terrible fucking place for it but he couldn't just ... leave after she'd disappeared right in front of him.  The look she'd given him when he told her as much had been terrifyingly unguarded.

He lets his eyes travel along the lines of her body - planes of skin, alternating between tanned and sunburned, white scars crisscrossing over it. There's a new one, harsh and raised between her breasts, a matching one down her spine he can’t see from this position. He's not sure why her head seems untouched despite apparently having her damn brain scooped out and reinserted but he's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Nothin' here you haven't seen before, Russ." He looks up to see her lips curl around the cigarette.

"Still a damn sight -"

" - For sore _eye_ ," she interrupts, grinning. She's probably never letting that go. He groans.

"Fuck you."

"You did, ten minutes ago."

"You know I was trying for a compliment there?"

"What, suddenly you don't need more meat on me?"

He grits his teeth. Should’ve bitten his damn tongue in the first place. "Sam ..."

She sits up, crushing her cigarette butt into the ash tray, and gives him a long, hard look. Something must've fucked up between them there because her ease is gone. “I don't need you to make me feel better about myself, Russell."

"I -"

"No, listen here. I'm fine with the whole not being your type shit. I don't need anyone to pretend I'm not who I am. This ain't ever been about how I look. Wanting to be pretty is for daughters of Brahmin barons with shit-all to do but look at pre-war mags and wish we were still there. I don't need your bullshit, you get me?"

He looks at her, naked and angry, and shakes his head. “You done?" She raises a brow, waiting. "Good, cause you fucking ran with that, damn. I don't give a fuck about your issues, Sam."

"Liar," she says under her breath and he acknowledges it with a shrug.

"I was trying to say it's good to have your sorry ass still in one piece and right back here. But hell, if you really don't think you get me going I've been doing a shit job of it." Truth is, at this point, she's exactly his type, to the point where it kind of scares the shit out of him to admit it.

"You've been doing just fine," she sighs, "Shit, I'm sorry."

"You want this to be about just you being here and willing?" And wouldn't that just be a big fucking lie right there?

"Fuck no. I just ... I don't know. I spent too much time around goddamn brains in jars and the crazy rubbed off on me?"

"Sure, let's go with that." It’s not quite the truth, her demeanor tells him that much.  He flops down onto the mattress and she follows, pressing their shoulders together. Their ratty blanket had ended up in a heap at the bottom of the bed earlier, so he makes a grab for it and drapes it over them both.  He wants to just doze off, let things rest there, but it’s harder than usual with something unfinished making the air heavy between them.

"You wanna know why I'm so damn fucked up about food?" Sam asks finally. Russell shrugs, knowing she can feel it. Sure he does, if she wants to tell. Prying's her favorite hobby though, not his. She fingers the dog tags still around her neck. He's never gotten those off her. "My girlfriend died. She was NCR. Somebody sent her squad into a goddamned death trap of an ambush. Some of them made it out alive - she didn't. It was one royal fuck-up that nobody ever got blamed for. 'An unfortunate lack of info', some bullshit like that. ‘These brave soldiers will be remembered.’  Lack of info my ass. Somebody fucked up the patrol routes. Didn't matter anymore at that point though, did it?" She laughs, humorless. "I didn't know what the fuck to do with myself. She was a fucking stellar soldier, me bein’ the one left didn’t make any kind of sense. And everything there just ... Well. Was about the time the NCR decided they wanted the Mojave, so I just ... went, easy as all that. Turns out, you can't run from some things. An' your coping can fuck you up worse than anything. Can't control everything you care about bein' ripped away but you can control what goes in your own damn body - or doesn't. It was a shit first couple years. I got myself together well enough at some point, then some piece of shit Vegas type comes around, puts me on my knees, puts two bullets in my head. So I fall back into old habits. I try and do it the other way 'round these days, control it instead of just stayin’ in that goddamn pit. Pretty sure it's working but you never know." When he looks over her eyes are closed. "Anyway, gist of my sob story right there. Figured it was high time you got it."

"Legion?"

"Raiders. Told you it was a fuck-up. If it was Legion I almost would've believed 'em."

"How long's it been?"

"At this point? Shit, eight and a half years, give or take. Enough to know I'm never going back."

"Nothing left there, huh?" He watches her lips twitch just slightly, rueful.

"Not much anyway. California was hers. The Mojave is mine."

"Still a shit hole."

"You've been here longer than I have."

"Exactly." This time, she laughs. He feels his lips twitch in response. "So, dead girlfriend..."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we've established the me being into women thing at this point."

"Sure. Not the dead love of my life part though."

"I told you these weren't mine." The chain around her neck clinks as she pulls on it. "'Sides, don't tell me you haven't got one somewhere."

"Not a dead one."

Her eyes fly open. "Russ ..."

"Jesus, not like that." He tells her about Mary. She's clearly got an opinion about the whole thing but she keeps it to herself.

"Just the one girl, huh?" is what she says. He looks at her, mouth suddenly dry. "Guess that makes us two of a kind."

"Guess so."

 

He gets a front row seat to Sam on her really bad days when she returns from Utah. Marko did enough of a number on her physically, mentally though ... She drinks too much, she smokes more, she forces something down her throat with timing like clockwork in a way that tells him everything he needs to know. She stares at the walls and never sleeps through the night. After a week of that he's ready to go to that fucking town in the hills himself, dig up Marko and blow his brains out a second time just for what he's done to her. He's no good at helping her, he's  been burying his own issues for a lifetime now. They don't talk about it beyond that first night she came back and he doesn't know what to make of her anymore. So he just ... sticks around, aimlessly. They hole up in Novac because nobody'll bother them there and let the days go by. He's not sure how he's the one to go stir crazy first.

"Sam, listen -"

"You don't have to stick around." She doesn't look at him as she says it, just stares at the tabletop.

"You're kidding me."

"I know I'm shit company right now. Wouldn't blame ya." He sits down across from her and just looks. He's been just looking for goddamn days now at the shadows under her eyes, the cuts and the bruises. It’s enough to make a man want to do regrettable things. She stares back, impassive.

"I ain't goin' anywhere, Sam, but you've gotta snap out of it."

"Not that easy."

"Look, if we just -"

"If you suggest going to Usanagi I'm going to punch you."

"It'd be an improvement." They look at each other for a moment longer before Sam lets her head fall forward, rubbing her hands over her face. They're bandaged but he knows how they look under there and it's not pretty. She looks so damn small like this, it's hard to believe she walked into a Legion fortress and killed Caesar without showing an ounce of fear not so long ago. Right now she looks broken. "You need some goddamn help, Sam."

"I need to turn back time and shoot fucking Marko in the face the moment I meet him. But that's not an option."

"Sam ..."

"There's a whole lotta people dead because of me, Russ, and not in a good way. Because I couldn't leave well enough alone. There's no way around what happened being my goddamn fault."

"Way I see it, you didn't pull the trigger."

"I did, actually. And it royally pissed off a fucking monster. By all rights, I should be in that damn graveyard with six feet of dirt above me like the rest of them."

"You want to be dead." The words stick in his throat. Goddamn, but that's not an option. Not ever.

"No, I ... I'm just ...” Her eyes glaze over before she forces herself to focus back on him. The look is so blank it hurts. “Survivor guilt's what they called it last time. Guess I'm just back to square fucking one." There's a helpless anger there, at herself and the world at large if he had to guess. He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest, just to stop himself from reaching out for her.

"Fine. But I'm with you in this one."

"Nothing better than suffering with an audience." But the look she gives him is relieved, as if she seriously thought he'd leave. As if that was actually an option.

 

She's had nightmares as long as he's known her - of Benny mostly, as far as she’s talked about them, and being up in that graveyard bound and helpless. But now it's frequent and as if she's breaking apart right in front of him. Waking up screaming, in cold sweat, the whole deal. He's had to grab her to stop her falling off the bed once or twice. Thing is though, once she's awake she refuses to be touched. It's damn frustrating because physical comfort had been the familiar option between them before this. It's also terrifying because it’s his first instinct and he's unsure how to deal with that feeling and her at the same time. Things are too off-kilter these days. They make do. The morning he wakes up with her head pressed between his shoulder blades and her hand twisted in the fabric of his shirt feels like a knot loosening.

 

Sam needs some readjusting to how she shoots with her hands fucked to all hell. She was a damn good shot before this and she still is but she reloads slower and she twitches ever so slightly when she pulls the trigger, pulling off her aim. She forces Boone to work with her on the latter and Russell changes his own patterns to work around the former. It takes a while to get it right but the next time they spot a Legion squad she nails the leader in the head with no hesitation or trouble. Things get better, slowly, even as tensions around them are rising. She gives herself as much time as they can spare between gathering allies and setting plans in motion. It’s not enough, both of them know it, not with her still looking worn thin at the edges.

„I don’t like putting this on anyone but you see me slippin’, you pull the damn breaks on me, alright?“ she tells him before they head off to meet up with Josey. He throws an arm around her shoulders, tugging her closer.

„You got it.“ He’s never liked Josey on their best days, but pulling Sam in was the right decision, that much he can admit. Plus, actually doing some good seems to help her at least a little, so as far as Russell’s concerned they’re good.

 

Just because Hoover Dam is a win for them doesn't mean they can relax just yet. Sam's ambitions are lofty even with an army of killer robots at her back and the NCR drags their feet about pulling out of the region. Sam offers them a few swift kicks in the ass, which seems to get them going. Of course, then there's Vegas pulling at her. The families like her, or respect her ... or owe her at the very least, and they'd like to do it publicly. She bears the brunt of it before bowing out at the offer of a feast at the Gourmand.

"Last time I was there, the menu was people." She laughs her way out at the offended sputtering she gets in response. Russell lets it slide when her dinner that night is mostly liquid. He tastes Scotch on her tongue when she kisses him. 

 

Sam doesn’t need anyone to take care of her, or so she says more than once to just about anyone who considers her a friend. Russell has traveled with her long enough to be inclined to agree. The little band of misfits they call friends drift in and out of their orbit. Arcade’s busier than ever at the Fort but still finds time to check up on her often enough she tells him to quit it. Cass occasionally tries to get her to talk but mostly just raids the Lucky 38’s bar. Veronica and Christine drift in and out, seemingly unsure where they belong anymore other than with each other. Raul comes around to good-naturedly rib at her before heading back out to save small children and look vaguely ridiculous. And Boone, well he’s still Boone. Still no love lost there but Russell can respect that he and Sam are close. That said, Boone pointedly _doesn’t_ try to help her. So, naturally, Russell gets urged into doing it every time it’s needed. ‘She won’t chew you out about it’ is the explanation. It’s close enough to the truth and he’s generally not in the mood for arguing with Cass especially. Maybe it’s just part of being her partner in crime. And he’s fine with it, really. She can take care of herself. Thing is, she doesn't have to. He'll be damned if he lets her fall that far again.

Things go on. People take care of themselves which ends up meaning she still goes around solving everyone's problems with an eye roll and a quip, same as before. She sends the robots on patrol to make short work of at least some of the issues coming up. He forces her to take it easy when she starts looking like she needs it. Those days, they laze away in the Penthouse, her dozing on his chest. She never says thank you but he doesn't need her to. The way she tangles her fingers with his is enough.

 


End file.
